MAGA Is Evil, But No-thing is Evil

Ressourcement in the Age of Trump, Part Two (Patristics)

This essay is the second in a three part series that engages the traditionally-understood “sources” to which a theologian adverts when engaged in ressourcement in order to engage in a theological reading of the current political moment. Ressourcement is particularly apt for this, because it was born against the backdrop of the rise of European fascism, and key figures in the ressourcement risked life and limb in order to resist Nazism (with Yves de Montcheuil paying the ultimate price for his resistance).

Part one appropriated Scripture, reading the MAGA movement as an exercise in suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and finding that sin is its own punishment in the light of Romans Chapter 1.

Today I turn to patristic theology, and particularly the thought of Augustine of Hippo as I try to reckon with how to view and relate to Trump supporters. Augustine has much to offer the present moment, though he often gets a bad rap. Some of that he definitely earns. A lot of it, though, I think stems from a less-than-historically-conscious reading of him. In other words, I’m not sure which of his patristic contemporaries we expect to do better than him on those issues with which we find fault with him. We should, of course, critique him, repudiating any and all harmful elements of his thought, but when he’s located within his fourth-and-fifth century Latin context, I actually think he comes out looking a lot better than we give him credit for. None of that is the point, though. Instead, I want to highlight how Augustine’s anti-Manichaean commitments can speak to the current political moment.

Calling Spades Spades, Nazis Nazis, and MAGA Evil

I begin by noting that I regard MAGA and Trumpism as evil. No surprise for anyone reading this Substack. I do not view Trump supporters differently than I do the Nazis of 1930s Germany. While it can seem excessive to draw comparison with the Nazis, I am not exaggerating when I say this. Trumpism has all the marks of fascism, is playing by the same playbook, and even makes use of Nazi imagery as we’ve seen in the repeated Nazi salutes given by Trump allies, who continue in their positions of influence despite (because of?) their Sieg Heils, drawing no rebukes from GOP leadership or Trump himself, who has noted his admiration for Hitler.

The Trump administration has urged Germany to admit the far-right AfD party, which trades upon Nazi imagery and sloganeering, into its mainstream. We have now aligned ourselves with the expansionist invasions of Russia against our erstwhile ally, Ukraine, all while threatening our own expansionist agenda.

We sometimes view Nazism as singularly and uniquely evil, making any comparisons thereto definitionally inadmissable. A large part of this is because we now know where the Nazi story led: to the horrors of the Shoah. This abominable episode tends to lead us to portray the Nazis as uniquely inhuman monsters, and to conflate the evils of National Socialism with the Shoah and opposition to the Nazis to opposition to their genocidal ambitions.

My appeal to Augustine will work to undercut the idea of the Nazis as inhuman monsters. Beyond that, we need to remember that while the scope of the Holocaust stands out among genocides, it is not the only genocide of to have occurred. Some are still happening even as I write. And, as a matter of history, the “final solution” was not fully in motion until the last three years of World War II. The Nazis were evil before they were exterminating the Jews (and others). The allies only discovered the full scope of the Holocaust upon liberating the camps. In other words, while we might sometimes picture the allies fighting to stop the Holocaust, we were fighting the Nazis before we even knew about the genocide. (It is now suggested that we had knowledge of the exterminations by the end of 1942, but that doesn’t change the overall point I’m making). Nazism was evil and the allies were right to fight against the Nazis even before the Holocaust was underway. Thus, there is a morally significant difference between Nazis from 1942 or so onward and Nazis before the exterminations began, but Nazism didn’t become evil when the death camps opened. It was evil from the start.

All this to say that when I say that I regard Trump supporters the same way I regard Nazis, I am not saying that there’s a MAGA genocide underway or in the works, though I would not rule that out. The Trump administration’s commitment to mass deportation and to detention centers for deportees (concentration camps) mirrors early Nazi policies towards the Jews. The assault upon trans-rights, including official attempts to erase acknowledgment of trans-people’s existence, evinces the logic of genocide, which attempts to extirpate populations. MAGA is engaged in the rhetoric and policies that pave the way for genocide.

There’s a meme going around that notes that the Shoah didn’t start with the gas chambers, but rather with politicians stoking divisions, hate speech, the erosion of rights, and so on. This is both accurate and misleading. It’s accurate because it alerts us to the importance of resisting evil and fascism before it’s too late. It’s accurate because it points us to warning signs so that we can avoid being swept along in complacency into something we could never imagine (yet). It’s accurate, because of its insistence on constant vigilance so that “never again” will horrors like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, or their like occur. But it’s misleading to the extent that it feeds a narrative that the main reason to oppose the nascent fascism of the contemporary United States is to prevent another Holocaust. Perhaps I’m naive, but I don’t think that’s where we’re heading. But we still need to resist the Trump regime. It is evil and would be evil even if it doesn’t do the very worst things that it might.

But I am not writing this essay to make my case that the Nazi label fits MAGA. It does, and only the most bad faith mental gymnastics could lead to any other conclusion. And, yes, if you’re reading this and don’t believe that the Nazi label is fair or accurate, I want you to understand that I think you’re an intellectually dishonest person. I’m not trading on subtext or implication here. That’s my explicit position. Instead, I am writing to explore how Augustine’s theology provides a resource for us as we try to make sense of what it means to share a country with over 77 million Nazis.

(It doesn’t directly impinge upon my evaluating MAGA as equivalent to 1930s Nazism, but I’d also add that the gutting of both international and domestic aid programs, the undercutting of vaccination programs, and the commitment to aiding, abetting, and otherwise providing cover for rapists and sex traffickers [Matt Gaetz, Andrew Tate, and Trump himself come immediately to mind], also tally in the “evil” column for the Trump administration.)

Augustine, The Goodness of Being, and the Original Celebrity Cult

For Augustine, and, with him the mainstream Christian tradition, and pretty significant swaths of pagan antiquity, being is fundamentally good. Plato was led to this affirmation by his contemplation of beauty. The Christian tradition receives it by revelation. The first chapter of Genesis details a good God creating a good universe, declaring at the end of the work of creation that all that has been created is “very good.”

This leads to the question, though, how do we account for all the evil that is so obviously all around us? Augustine, following the Genesis narrative, posits that evil is the result of misused freedom. Adam and Eve—mythical representatives of humanity—choose against God, choose against goodness, and as a result disorder enters the world. Thus, evil is not a thing, because every thing is created by God, and, by definition, is good. (If God created evil, then, we’re dealing with an evil God, in which case, we’re basically just eternally and hopelessly hosed.) The classical description is that evil is a privation of goodness. An absence of what should be there. A failure to do what one ought to do.

Evil is parasitic, a corruption of being, rather than itself being something. Put another way, there can be being without evil (God is a case in point), but there cannot be evil without being, because without being there would be nothing. All of this abstruse reasoning leads to the payoff that there is no ontological evil, which is to say that nothing is evil in itself. Evil is the result of the will choosing against the good. (There’s a good deal more that we could say, and a lot more nuance that we could add, but that should suffice for my purposes here.)

All of this is in contrast to Manichaeism, which was a radically dualistic religion to which Augustine belonged for somewhere around a decade before his conversion first to Platonism and then to Catholic Christianity. When I teach undergraduates about Manichaeism, I describe them as “the original celebrity cult,” because they appealed to the young Augustine’s contrarian sense of being a once in a generation intellectual powerhouse. He was so singularly smart that the Manichees convinced him to spend ten years collecting cucumbers and melons for their priestly class so that they could eat them, thereby releasing the light trapped inside, thereby aiding in a cosmic struggle.

The Manichees held that there was indeed ontological evil, which in turn mean that some things simply are evil. Augustine’s time as a Manichaean auditor left him with a strong distaste for the idea of ontological evil, and so his writings display a decidedly anti-Manichaean bent. He strongly insists on a privation theory of evil, because he recognizes that the alternative is disastrous, giving us a world utterly devoid of hope. If evil is some thing, then we’re simply stuck with evil. There’s nothing we can do about it, except perhaps to try to purge it from existence, which is its own doomed enterprise. You cannot eliminate ontological principles.

All of this is not to say that evil is an illusion. It’s all too real. Instead, it insists that evil is not inevitable, that it does not belong, and that it does not make rational sense. What is evil is always also stupid (as my friend, Jon Heaps frequently notes). What this does, then, is to raise the stakes when we’re faced with evil. Evil exists to the extent that it’s chosen, and no one has to choose it.

Opposing MAGA’s Evils Without “Doing a Manichaeism”

To return to our political moment. I believe that the MAGA movement is evil, that to support Donald Trump and his policies is evil, that to collaborate with the Trump administration or to acquiesce to its evils is evil. Trump supporters commit grave evil in their supporting his regime. But my Augustinian commitments remind me that these people are not simply, wholly, and irreducibly evil. This is not at all to make excuses for them. If anything, it removes all excuses. If Trump supporters were ontologically evil, then we’d have an explanation for their wickedness. But precisely because they are fundamentally and essentially good, their support of Trumpism is unexcusably vile.

And what this means for me is that I cannot simply dismiss or discount them as hopeless cases. They remain God’s good creatures, capable of intelligent and morally responsible action. If they are committed to acting against reason and morality, so much the worse for all of us, but conversion remains a possibility for them.

I’m still struggling to figure out precisely how to live out that Augustinian commitment. It would be a lot easier to be a Manichaean, wash my hands of them, and move on with my life. This, though, is precisely what the Doctor of Grace will not allow, though.

Instead, somehow, I need to find a way to live with Trump supporters. But this cannot mean to cooperate with them. There’s a word for people who cooperate with Nazis: Nazis. My conscience will not allow cooperation. Nor to minimize or excuse their evil. There are no excuses, and conscience compels me to speak out against and to resist Trumpism. Nor to build mutual understanding and respect. Again, fascism takes that off the table. There is no common ground or mutuality to pursue here. Just opposition. Around the time of the inauguration, we were subjected to not a few calls to national unity. I refuse to pursue unity with Nazis (and, again, if you belong to the party that pursues Nazi policies and engages in Nazi salutes, you’re a Nazi, even if you don’t like that label).

This is not the kind of disagreement where we can “agree to disagree,” and just avoid the topic, so that we can continue despite our differences. I couldn’t live with myself if I weren’t resisting and opposing the Trump agenda and trying to persuade MAGA-types to repent and amend their lives.

But as I oppose MAGA, I must do so with an awareness that my enemies are my fellow human beings, that they have the same fundamental dignity that I do, the same dignity that I’m trying to defend when I speak out against them in favor of immigrants, LGBTQ people, and the others whom MAGA is targeting.

I cannot be friends with Trump supporters. I cannot respect or cooperate with Trump supporters. But, bracingly, I also must not hate them, even if I hate their wicked deeds and the mayhem, harm, and misery that it causes. Jesus tells me to love my enemies. I don’t know how to love MAGA folks, whose values are apparently completely opposite to my own, but I know that I have no choice. It was, after all, while we were still sinners, still enemies of God that Christ loved and gave himself for us (Romans 5:8–10). Love for those who oppose one’s most cherished values is possible, because it is actual, if nowhere else, then at least in Jesus Christ’s act of salvation.

An idea that I began developing in my book on church division, Ruptured Bodies is that the church might be better understood not as a place of agreement, but as a place of disagreement, of struggle and strife, a place of agonism (the Greek word agon refers to struggle, conflict, striving). We miss the mark badly when we assume that love can only take the form of agreement or friendliness, or that disagreement and conflict are out of bounds for those bound by love. I can’t not speak out against MAGA, nor fail to call it and its evils out for what they are: evil. I can’t not do what’s in my power to stop these evils from succeeding.

And because Trump supporters have the “misfortune” of not being ontologically evil, this means they’re capable of changing their minds, which means they’re going to have to deal with me pointing out the evils and hypocrisy of MAGA in the hopes that God grant them repentance.

(I’m also eerily and uneasily aware of how this parallels the Evangelical slogan of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” which is so often weaponized against LGBTQ folks, leading some to observe that “there’s no hate like Christian ‘love.’” All I can do is to protest that these are not parallel cases. Homophobia is not morally equivalent to anti-fascism.)

The kind of love that Jesus calls me to enact for Trump supporters is, in the end, best understood as an agonistic love. And as I try to figure out how to enact it, I find it not just agonistic, but agonizing. I guess I can take solace that it’s likely to be just as bracing for them.

Buckle in. This is going to be very uncomfortable.